What it is

A Rakefile to simplify previewing and deploying jekyll websites.

The main features of this rakefile are:

• Deployment through rsync
• Ready-made tasks for common operations (e.g., creating a post, checking links, listing changes since last deploy)
• Management of different configurations, one for previewing and another for deploying (it simplifies deployment on non-root URLs)
• Support for compass compilation
• Integration with git: check there are no upstream changes before deploying; git commit and push on publication

Notice that Jekyll has introduced many new features since this Rakefile was first released. One, for instance, is support for compass compilation; another is improved documentation related to deployment on non-root urls. This Rakefile is quite configurable in the functions it provides, so you might still find it useful, even if you are using some of the new features provided by Jekyll or even if you are deploying your website using Github pages.

Installation

1. Download this repository
2. Put the files in your jekyll website directory
3. If needed, change the values of the variables in _rake_configuration.yml
4. Start using it!

Note. The _rake_configuration.yml can be safely deleted if you are using the default values or if you prefer to set the variables directly in the Rakefile.

Typical Usage Scenario

Specify the deployment configuration in the _config_deploy.yml file (see next section for details).

Then use the rakefile to help perform standard operations. For instance:

rake create_post[,"A post"]
rake preview
rake deploy

Managing Deployment

Relative vs. absolute URLs. Using relative URLs in a Jekyll site can be tricky. Think of a situation in which you are using the same layout for pages at different levels of nesting. Relative links in the layout will be resolved differently for pages at different levels of nesting and, thus, will work only for some of the pages, while failing for others. On the other hand, using absolute URLs in the layout might break the possibility of previewing a website, since absolute links might not solve correctly with respect to http://localhost:4000. Moreover, if you want your website to remain portable, it is a good idea to make the deployment URL into a configuration variable, which can be set once and for all in a single location.

There are various possibility to address the issue mentioned above. First, Jekyll provides a baseurl configuration variable, which can be used to make all URLs absolute; the value of baseurl can be overridden using a command-line argument when previewing. Another possibility is using a Jekyll plugin, which helps resolving the URLs of assets. A third possibility, in fact used by previous versions of this Rakefile, is defining a variable, e.g. url and set this variable in _config.yml to the desired URL when deploying and to http://localhost:4000 when previewing. This ensures that URLs are correctly resolved in both environments, but it requires to keep changing _config.yml.

The problem of setting variables in one way when previewing and in another when deploying, however, is quite general. For instance, if you use JAPR, you might want to compile the assets only when deploying and leave them unbundled when debugging/previewing. This can be achieved setting the JAPR bundle variable, which needs to be set to false when previewing and to true when deploying.

Specifying the configuration for deployment. This Rakefile, thus, takes inspiration to the different environments provided by Ruby on Rails and allows users to specify deployment-specific settings in a _config_deploy.yml file, which is used only when deploying a website.

More in details, when running:

• rake preview, the Rakefile instructs Jekyll to read the _config.yml file only
• rake deploy (or rake build), the Rakefile instructs Jekyll to read the content of both _config.yml and _config_deploy.yml

This allows to provide specific settings for deployment, overriding those set in _config.yml, if necessary.

Notice that you can also pass an optional argument to rake deploy (rake build), which specifies the environment you want to use. Thus, for instance:

• rake build[testing] will instruct Jekyll to read the content of both _config.yml and _config_testing.yml. Of course you can replace testing with any environment you prefer. This, for instance, allows you to mirror the same website on different machines or to test a deployment before actually making your website available.

Rsync As a bonus, the Rakefile manages deployment through rsync. A special variable deploy_dir can be defined in _config_deploy.yml, to specify the directory where the Jekyll site has to be deployed using rsync.

For instance, _config_deploy.yml could look like:

baseurl: http://www.example.com/some/subdir
deploy_dir: [email protected]:/some/directory

If you prefer to use url instead of baseulr,the _config_deploy.yml will look like:

url: http://www.example.com/some/subdir
deploy_dir: [email protected]:/some/directory

Integration with Git

If you are using git to manage the sources of your website, the simplest way to deploy a Jekyll website is with Github pages. The second best solution is defining a post-commit hook (once again, look at Jekyll’s documentation). In both cases, in fact, the deployment of the website is subordinated to a successful push on the default remote. This ensures that websites can be deployed only when the version being pushed builds upon the latest version committed on the repository. If this check is not performed, the risk is deploying on the web an old version of the repository. However, there are situations in which these solutions are not feasible.

If you use git to control the sources of your Jekyll website, this Rakefile can check the status of the default remote before deploying and, optionally, commit and push changes to the default remote after deploying a website. The first behavior (warning if you are trying to publish an old version of your repository) is set by default. If you want to commit and push on deploy, you need to set the variable $git_autopush to true in _rake_configuration.rb.

Commands

The commands made available are:

rake build                                     # Build for deployment (but do not deploy)
rake check_links                               # Check links for site already running on localhost:4000
rake clean                                     # Clean up generated site
rake create_post[date,title,category,content]  # Create a post
rake deploy                                    # Build and deploy to remote server
rake list_changes                              # Print the file changed since last deploy
rake post_changes                              # Create a post listing all changes since last deploy
rake preview                                   # Preview on local machine (server with --auto)

Change Log

• version 2.0 changes quite radically the behaviour, exploiting some of the changes made to Jekyll. The Rakefile does not mess up with _config.yml anymore, but it expects a _config_deploy.yml (or similar) file to specify the deployment directives. The value of $deploy_dir$ is now specified in _config_deploy.yml; this allows to keep the configuration variables together; support multiple deployment configurations; give the _rake_configuration.rb file up, if the default settings (compass, git check, …) are ok. The new git checks verify that the local repository is in sync with the remote and optionally pushes all changes to the remote after a commit.

Caveats

If you do not put the following directive in your _config.yml file:

exclude: ['Rakefile']

the Rakefile will end up in your website. (It shouldn’t do any harm if you publish it.)

License

Distributed under the terms of the MIT License